Why can’t Jane play sports with Dick?

I might have hated soccer as a kid but I wasn’t a couch potato. Tennis was my sport, and I was actually all right at smacking balls over the net. In junior high I played on the school team, which was coed because we didn’t have enough players to fill out same-sex groups. I was No. 2 on the ladder and a boy named Ryan was No. 1.

Ryan and I played a match for the top spot and I remember it in detail because I let him win. In the first game, I determined that I could beat him–just hit it to his backhand. But instead I lobbed balls to his forehand and played shots of his that were clearly out. I feared beating him.

What does this mean? Was I an emotionally weak wimp? Or was I deeply affected by society’s stereotypes about boys and sports? After all, this was the first coed team I played on. This was the first time I had competed with a boy in sports. Up until that point, all of my teams–soccer, softball, swimming–were divided into boy-girl groups. I assumed the boys were separated out because they were stronger, tougher.

Periodically, I think about that tennis match with Ryan. In fact, it came to mind today when a girlfriend called to talk about my post on soccer. Her kindergarten-age boys were also invited to join a team. “I can entirely relate to your anxiety,” my friend said. “I was a klutz on the field too.”

But my friend was even more concerned about something else. Her boys were invited to join an all-boys team just as Paris received an invite from an all-girls one. “Why must the same-sex thing start so early?” she said. “They’re only in kindergarten?”

My friend has a point. I wonder: If I had played on a coed team in kindergarten would I have had the mental strength to beat Ryan?